June 05, 2013

I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I thought I'd cover the exhibit elements, one at a time, over a few months. I started small and am working my way up.

The Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).

1019 MAGNITUDE 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 m 1,000 Light-years

Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy

Nearly 10,000 Light-years

The Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy (Sag DEG), if you can call anything almost 10,000 light-years in diameter “dwarf,” is a loop-shaped satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. Currently about 70,000 light-years from Earth, Sag DEG travels in a polar orbit around the Milky Way at a distance of about 50,000 light-years from its core.

Astronomers believe that Sag DEG has been in orbit around the Milky Way for billions of years, and has already orbited it approximately 10 times. Its ability to retain its galactic coherence despite such orbital strains would indicate an unusually high concentration of dark matter within the galaxy.

Dark matter is a type of matter hypothesized to account for a large part of the total mass in the universe. Dark matter cannot be seen directly with telescopes. It gets its name because it neither emits nor absorbs light or other electromagnetic radiation at any significant level. Instead, its existence and properties are inferred from its gravitational effects on visible matter, radiation, and the large-scale structure of the universe. This series of blog posts is about objects that increase in size 10x with each post. Here we have an object whose size is theoretical instead of being based solely on what is seen.

Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.

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I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I thought I'd cover the exhibit elements, one at a time, over a few months. I started small and am working my way up.

The Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).

1019 MAGNITUDE 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 m 1,000 Light-years

Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy

Nearly 10,000 Light-years

The Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy (Sag DEG), if you can call anything almost 10,000 light-years in diameter “dwarf,” is a loop-shaped satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. Currently about 70,000 light-years from Earth, Sag DEG travels in a polar orbit around the Milky Way at a distance of about 50,000 light-years from its core.

Astronomers believe that Sag DEG has been in orbit around the Milky Way for billions of years, and has already orbited it approximately 10 times. Its ability to retain its galactic coherence despite such orbital strains would indicate an unusually high concentration of dark matter within the galaxy.

Dark matter is a type of matter hypothesized to account for a large part of the total mass in the universe. Dark matter cannot be seen directly with telescopes. It gets its name because it neither emits nor absorbs light or other electromagnetic radiation at any significant level. Instead, its existence and properties are inferred from its gravitational effects on visible matter, radiation, and the large-scale structure of the universe. This series of blog posts is about objects that increase in size 10x with each post. Here we have an object whose size is theoretical instead of being based solely on what is seen.

Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.